Several bloggers on the right are criticizing Nir Rosen for engaging in an extended Twitter exchange trivializing and making fun of what happened to Lara Logan. I’m going to single out Jim Geraghty’s comments for quoting, because I feel that he makes the point without engaging in partisan name-calling or ad hominem attacks:

The news from CBS about correspondent Lara Logan’s assault in Egypt is awful beyond words.

At a time like this, we all feel helpless. And angry. The perpetrators, anonymous men in an angry mob, may never see justice.

Perhaps we can channel that frustration and anger towards righting a wrong closer to home. To some other outrage… say… the reaction to Logan’s assault from a fellow at the NYU Center for Law and Security, Nir Rosen.
[screen shot of Rosen’s Twitter feed]
Nir Rosen deleted some of his worst comments about Logan on his Twitter feed, but… it’s the Internet. It’s never gone forever.

I’m sure Rosen will apologize at some point, and perhaps we’ll get some tut-tutting statement from NYU about the need for “civility” and “restraint” and “sensitivity.” Brows will be furrowed. Maybe they’ll hold a seminar about technology and emotional reactions to breaking news events.

But let’s just remember one thing going forward: Nir Rosen believed this was the right moment to let the world know that he “ran out of sympathy for her” and that we should “remember her role as a major war monger” and that we “have to find humor in the small things.”

I’m going to say this as clearly as I can. Rape — any rape — is an atrocity. The circumstances under which Logan was raped — by a mob of men who were supposedly celebrating the resignation of Egypt’s president Hosni Mubarak — were, if there can be degrees of horror when it comes to rape, about as horrifying as any human being could imagine. I don’t care about her political views. I don’t care if she is or isn’t a “war-monger.” I’m not even going to state my views in general about Lara Logan’s reporting. I don’t care what they are in this context. They don’t matter. What I feel for and about Lara Logan right now is just an ocean of grief and compassion. No woman deserves to be raped, and no woman’s rape shoudl have people rolling their eyes about “the attention she’s getting” or her political views. It’s repulsive. It’s disgusting. It’s inexcusable.

Jim Geraghty is absolutely, unequivocally correct on this, and that’s all I have to say.

Kathy Kattenburg

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